Looks like long-time Chicago investigative reporter Carol Marin really laid her hate for everyone right of center bare with her lie-filled attack on WLS radio personality and political operative Dan Proft last week.

Marin, a reporter with quite a reputation for factual columns, lambasted a mail ad that Proft’s political action group sent out that featured a “homophobic” slam on House member Ron Sandack.

Only there was a problem with Marin’s attack on Proft. The ad she was criticizing wasn’t sent by his PAC. It was sent by Illinois Family Action.

Marin slammed Proft as a gay basher, called him a homophobe, and attacked him in several ways interpreting all his mailers are anti-gay.

She proved to be one of those haters of conservatives and Republicans that reads “hate” into everything people right of center do. She proved to be shrill, blind to reality, and more interested in promulgating her own brand of hate than in the truth.Read more

The Chicago Sun-Times has apologized for a headline pun reporting on the Asiana 214 airliner crash that seemed racist to some Asians.

The Sunday Sun-Times Front Page

Asiana flight 214 crashed in San Francisco on Saturday, June 6, but in its front page report on the crash, the Chicago Sunday Sun-Times blared a headline that read “FRIGHT 214.”

The Asian American Journalists Association was not amused by the play on words wondering if the Sun-Times understood that changing the “L” in “FLIGHT” to an “R” could easily be perceived as a play on the stereotypical difficulty of some Asians to pronounce the letter “L.”

“While we at the Asian American Journalists Association are willing to give the Sun-Times the benefit of the doubt, the headline used to accompany the paper’s coverage was certainly unfortunate. An editor should have caught the racially tinged wording,” said AAJA’s Bobby Calvan in a public post on the organization’s website.Read more

In yet another example of the retrenching in the national media landscape, the Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff and plans to replace them with freelancers.

Chicago radio reports say that the Sun-Times intends to “focus on video” instead of still photography.

The Chicago Tribunereports that its rival laid off 20 full-time staffers and posted a statement from the Times

The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news. We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements. The Chicago Sun-Times continues to evolve with our digitally savvy customers, and as a result, we have had to restructure the way we manage multimedia, including photography, across the network.

Erika Enigk Grotto, the spouse of one laid-off Times photographer said that her husband was told that reporters will now be tasked with using their own cell phones to take photos to accompany articles.

The @suntimes laid off the company’s entire photo staff this morning. Reporters will be shooting with their phones. Solid business decision.

In perhaps an unsurprising move, the Chicago Tribune has announced that starting in January, the Chicago-based paper and several other Tribune-owned papers will be dropping the Associated Press as its chief wire service.

Along with Chicago, six other Tribune-owned papers will also be dropping the AP. Those papers are the Baltimore Sun; the Orlando Sentinel; the South Florida Sun-Sentinel; the Hartford Courant; the Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania; and the Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia.

Reports from Tribune insiders were confirmed Sunday by Paul Colford, director of media relations for AP. “We’re disappointed by this development but recognize this is a time of transition for these seven Tribune newspapers,” Colford said. “We hope they’ll return to AP as their circumstances change. AP continues to diversify its business to enhance the value of our newsgathering for our 1,400 member newspapers and other news organizations worldwide. The Los Angeles Times has indicated that it plans to stay with AP. The Times has been a great partner in innovation and developing new AP services for many years.”

This news shouldn’t really be a big surprise as the Trib had already started to scale back use of the AP. As far back as 2008 the Trib began using Reuters’ American wire content.Read more

Withchunt: The Chicago Sun-Times once again revels in its partisanship by demanding the public release of the medical records of Senator Mark Kirk while ignoring the records of Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.

For the Times, Phil Kadner is all upset that the U.S. government should be expected to pay for the medical bills and recovery costs for Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican who suffered a stroke last year and has since been making a steady recovery.

But the same left-wing Old Media hack isn’t calling for the records of Democrat Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who claims he has “bi-polar” disorder and was out of the public eye for most of the year before finally resigning in disgrace just ahead of a federal investigation into his theft of campaign funds.Read more

A Chicago Sun-Times columnist is saddened by the flame out of Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., the Chicago Congressman that just resigned after a Congressional investigation into misuse of campaign funds. His story is that of a Greek hero, she claims.

Columnist Laura Washington waxes poetic about Jackson, Jr.’s fall from grace likening him to legendary Greek character Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and fell from the skies. But she doesn’t cut him much slack, really.

Washington notes that Jackson, Jr. isn’t the first 2nd District Congressman who has been a disappointment to voters. In fact, he’s the third in a row that left office under a cloud. Jackson replaced Mel Reynolds who went to jail for sexual misconduct, child pornography and obstruction of justice and Reynolds replaced Gus Savage, a long-time Illinois pol who left office after the House investigated him for sexual misconduct.Read more

Lynn Sweet, columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, is once again banging that liberal drumbeat that Romney’s voters are all racist white folks because crowds at Obama’s rallies are more “diverse.”

Talking of Monday’s Obama rallies with aging rocker Bruce Springsteen, Columnist Sweet waxed poetic over the racial make up of the crowds in Wisconsin.

Obama has the cool folks like “the Boss” and Jay-Z, and as far as Sweet is concerned the crowds are even cooler saying (my bold), Obama’s crowds are “with demographic diversity like you never see at a Romney event: black, white, old, young.”

But one thing that is missing from Sweet’s gift to Obama: the numbers.Read more

The Chicago Sun Times has received your message loud and clear, dear readers. As much as admitting that they are biased and they know it, the long-time Windy City staple has decided that hence forth it will no longer endorse candidates for political office.

In a Sunday editorial, the 71-year-old paper announced its new policy amusingly touting the Old Media’s party line that it engages in “unbiased news coverage” and that newspapers today wish to “appeal to the widest possible readership.”

“They want to inform you, not spin you,” the editorial avers. Yet, the editorial goes on to admit that it has heard from readers who seriously doubt that dedication to unbiased news coverage. And when you note that over the last several decades few national news papers have endorsed a Republican for President — most especially the left-leaning Chicago Sun-Times — it is easy to doubt that purported dedication to just-the-facts reporting.Read more

Apparently the Obama White House is not so fond of the Boston Herald. Well, maybe “not so fond” is too mild. More like furious. So mad, in fact, that the paper was banned by the White House from covering local visits by Obama and crew. The Boston Herald said “pretty please” and Big Brother O’s crew said, “not allowed!” And Orwell would be saying, “I told ya so.”

As Politico explained, the White House designates local pool reporters to augment the traveling pool of reporters covering events on the road. Usually a request is all it takes to get added to the pool. But when the Herald contacted the White House to get its reporters added to the pool the paper was denied access.

Apparently the water in Obama’s pool is too warm for the Boston Herald!Read more

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that a rally held by a coalition of Chicago-area black pastors that gathered to warn Illinois against same-sex marriage and civil unions was ignored by the Old Media in Chicago. Still, as unsurprising as it it, it’s a bit galling that this event went unreported on.

The Illinois Family Institute posted a January 19 article on the snubbing by the Old Media that charges the Chicago media with an anti-Christian bias. It’s nearly impossible to deny the charge, too.

The press conference was held to call upon Illinois to oppose SB 1716, a civil unions bill now being considered 9n the state capitol in Springfield. But their conference was completely ignored. Worse than ignored, some media outlets were there yet all stories were killed by the bosses back at the studios and newspapers from which they came. So, this story was not just ignored, it was suppressed.Read more

Newly elected Cook County Commissioner Jeff Tobolski is leaving the office of mayor of the Village of McCook, Illinois. Now, a few weeks after the election, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that he and his father before him have filled village government with relatives from top to bottom raking in a combined $350,000 in yearly salary (not including benefits), tax money elicited from a tiny village of only 200 some residents.

Naturally, in another installment of the “name that party” game, the Chicago Sun-Times seemed to somehow forget to mention in its coverage of this outrageous nepotism that Tobolski is yet another corrupt Democrat who is only in government for personal enrichment and to dole out goodies, high paying jobs, and pension benefits to his relatives.

Also just as naturally, the Chicago Sun-Times somehow forget to release this story before the recent election. Obviously the Times didn’t want to hurt the election chances of this Democrat on Nov. 2.Read more

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-By Warner Todd Huston
Looks like long-time Chicago investigative reporter Carol Marin really laid her hate for everyone right of center bare with her lie-filled attack on WLS radio personality and political op